YouTube Video Demonstrates How Foreign Languages Sound to Nonspeakers

Trending Now•March 5, 2014

A Finnish YouTube user might not know how to speak many languages, but she sure sounds like she can.

In a video uploaded on Monday 19-year-old Sara mimics what different dialects sound like to her. As she moves from language to language, she makes absolutely no sense yet sounds as if she speaks it fluently.

For full disclosure, I wouldn't be able to fact-check most of the languages she speaks anyway. It's only when she gets to her American-English impression that her talent is confirmed.

"Yeah, I mean, uh," she starts in her American accent, sounding as if she's a native Californian (no offense California). She then drops some gibberish that sounds like, "Trevor-mis-underpairing-like-monin-fair. Follow me, like a pending friend-tricket. Balone-a-value precise-y. Hello?"

Basically, she's ready for her own reality TV show.

All kidding aside, a lot of people on YouTube are giving the 19-year-old credit for her dialect skills. Others are a bit offended that she would re-create their language.

"The thing is, I'm not trying to speak any languages in this video," she posted in response to some of the criticism. "My point is only to bring out what the languages sound like to me."

To her, the languages sound like gibberish. She also explains that she was careful to name her Italian dialect "pizza," because she understood her interpretation might not be good enough for Italian speakers. All in all, she realizes some are better than others but cautions viewers not to take any of them too seriously.

Regardless of whether people are mad about it, many are tuning in. The video has 1.3 million views and more than 18,000 likes; it has a little over 900 dislikes.